Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Attempted murder is not an attempt to murder

Alice falsely believes that killing her husband Bob would be morally right (say, because Bob committed adultery). She shoots Bob, trying to hit him in the head, but misses completely and Bob escapes. Alice has committed attempted murder. But while she attempted to kill Bob, she did not attempt to murder Bob. For it was her intention to rightfully kill Bob rather than to murder him.

Therefore, attempted murder is not an attempt to murder. Speaking very carefully, we should say that Alice committed an attempted murder but did not attempt a murder. What she attempted was a killing, a killing that would have been a murder had she succeeded.

While the point is particularly clear in the case where the attempted murderer believes the killing to be right, the point also goes through in cases where the attempted murderer knows the killing would be a murder. Suppose Chuck wants to inherit an estate from his uncle Dave. Chuck knows full well that killing Dave would be a murder, and he attempts to kill Dave to gain the estate. Unless Chuck is especially malevolent, Chuck's intention is that Dave should die rather than that Dave should wrongfully die. After all, whether Dave's death is wrongful or not does not affect Chuck's inheritance (as long as Chuck doesn't get caught, that is). Thus Chuck did not intend that Dave be murdered, but only that he be killed.

It seems likely, thus, that in typical cases of attempted murder there was no attempt at murder, but only an attempt at a killing, a killing that the malefactor did or did not know to be a murder.

The point goes through for other misdeeds. An attempt at theft is typically an attempt to take something, but not typically an attempt to thieve. An attempt to lie is typically an attempt to convince of p, but not typically an attempt to convince of a (subjective or objective) falsehood (the crooked car dealer attempts to convince you that the car runs well, and that's all--she isn't trying to convince you of a falsehood as such).

Roughly, it seems that we call an action "an attempt at M", where "M" is a morally loaded description, provided that the agent is attempting to N, where "N" is a morally unloaded description, and where the N would be an M were the agent to succeed. But that's only a rough characterization. Here's a weird case. Erin has just picked up an alien weapon and is attempting to kill Frank, an innocent person, with that weapon. Unbeknownst to Erin, the weapon is a smart raygun that only fires at people whom it is just to kill (e.g., it checks whether the killing would be a part of a just war). Then Erin has committed attempted murder, even though had her attempt to kill succeeded, she would have been engaging in a just killing rather than a murder. I don't know how to characterize attempted murder to get out of counterexamples like this. An interesting ethics project for a graduate student!

One cannot infer "intends B" from "intends A" and "knows A=B". For instance: A = telling a student he failed the exam B = causing the student distressI can intend to tell a student he failed the exam while knowing this will cause distress, even though I do not intend distress.

I don't mean to nit-pick, but A does NOT equal B in the student case. Unjust killing just IS murder; they are equivalent. Informing a student that they failed may CAUSE them distress, but the two events are not identical. Killing unjustly doesn't have murder as its EFFECT; it just IS murder.

On coarse-grained theories of events, A=B. What was the cause of the student's distress? It was A. So, A was a causing of distress. Remember Davidson's example where turning on the lights = alerting the burglar.

On fine-grained theories of events, indeed A is not B. But neither is a particular killing identical with a particular murder.

I'm not sure I understand. I probably need to read up some more on this distinction. To me it seems inescapably obvious that "unjustified killing" is a very good definition of "murder"; they are two labels for one and the same thing. No such relation holds in the teacher-student scenario....

It's not the right definition of murder, because a killing can be morally unjustified for reasons other than ones that make it a murder.

But I am happy to grant the point for the sake of argument. It seems quite clear that just as you can intend a conversation without intending an unpleasant conversation, even when you foresee that the conversation will in fact be unpleasant, one can intend a killing without intending an unjustified killing, even when one foresees that the killing will in fact be unjustified.

Again, if I know the conversation will be unpleasant, then either I intend an unpleasant conversation or else I don't intend that particular conversation at all. I go into it knowing full well that it will be unpleasant, and yet I still intend to engage in it.

Let me try phrasing it differently: You seem to be objecting to the idea that I want to have an unpleasant conversation in general. But you admit that I do want to have THIS PARTICULAR conversation which I know will certainly be unpleasant. Since THIS PARTICULAR unpleasant conversation is a member of the set "unpleasant conversations", it is surely logically impossible to want to have it without wanting to have "one of the set". It's like wanting to have 6 marbles without wanting to have a quantity of marbles that is one of the natural numbers!

But it's quite possible to want to have 6 marbles without wanting to have a quantify of marbles that is one of the natural numbers. You might not care about the natural numbers, just about the 6 marbles.

Here's a conditional test. If you don't get what you intended, you failed. Suppose that you expect the conversation to be unpleasant, but it turns out that you're wrong--it was quite pleasant. You didn't fail in any way. That shows you didn't intend an unpleasant conversation, since if you did, you failed.

Similarly, suppose it turns out that it wasn't unjust for Chuck to kill Dave. Chuck's action of killing Dave then is not a murder. But it is still successful. Hence, what Chuck intended was Dave's death rather than Dave's unjust death.

(You might wonder how it could turn out not to be unjust. Maybe it turns out that Dave was threatening Chuck, and Chuck had a right to kill him in self-defense, but didn't know that killing in self-defense was permissible.)

About Me

I am a philosopher at Baylor University. This blog, however, does not purport to express in any way the opinions of Baylor University. Amateur science and technology work should not be taken to be approved by Baylor University. Use all information at your own risk.